The Creators Of ‘American Vandal’ Reveal #WhoDrewTheDicks

If you weren’t paying attention, you may have missed one of the funniest shows of the year. In early August, Netflix released its first trailer, begging the world to ask #WhoDrewTheDicks, and from its first episode American Vandal has lived up to its ridiculous hype.

If John Hughes met Sarah Koenig, the result would be American Vandal. The fictional docuseries follows the story of Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro), a slacker student who was suspended for spray painting 27 dicks in the faculty parking lot. There’s just one problem — Dylan swears he didn’t do it. Through an eight part investigation that involves tracing embarrassing hook ups, destroying friendships, dodging the administration, and, of course, drawing dicks, amateur documentarian Peter (Tyler Alvarez) and his best friend Sam (Griffin Gluck) attempt to prove Dylan’s innocence. It’s an incredibly silly series that surprisingly has a heartfelt and insightful message at its center.

“We knew that this would not work if this was a four hour dick joke. Our goal was to make a series of relatable high school stories in the framework of a true crime documentary,” co-creator Dan Perrault said in a recent interview with Decider. “We wanted to make characters in the story that you really care about, and we find that the emotional moments hit harder because you’re really not expecting them.”

Photo: Netflix

Perrault and his frequent collaborator and the director of the series Tony Yacenda started working on American Vandal in February of 2016. “At that point we had watched Making a Murderer, and it was really apparent that this was becoming a trend because within a year, a year prior to that Serial and The Jinx had come out,” Perrault said. “We realized that this was a major trend that we wanted to do something with.”

In making the docuseries, the creators pulled from some of the best true crime documentaries of all time, including the iconic The Thin Blue Line and one of the first episodic crime documentaries ever, The Staircase. “There’s so many. The Morning Show Nine is kind of a nod to the Central Park Five in [Ken] Burns’ documentary. It was really fun homework for us,” Yacenda said.

Part of the reason why the series works so well is its authenticity. Thought the premise of the docuseries is silly, American Vandal feels as though it’s set in a real high school and a made by real students. According to Perrault and Yacenda, a lot of work went into creating that authenticity, from only using equipment that Peter could access to constructing the perfect dicks that could plausibly be mistaken for one another.

“There was a lot of working backwards from logic, looking at what would [Peter] has access to and how would he have filmed this scene,” Yacenda said. Filming the series always involved looking at things from Peter’s perspective and examining what resources the character plausibly had. For example, early episodes where Peter only had access to the school’s equipment are understandably bare bones. However, after his YouTube series becomes viral and they start receiving donations, later episodes of the series have more expensive flourishes like music cues, drone shots, and more graphics.

Yacenda also revealed that most of the series relied on improv. “We would throw away the script at first and not block anything and just have them do an improvised take first so that we would never know where it would go,” he said. “I think when you do improv after a scripted take, you may alter certain jokes or they know the blocking and it ends up feeling a bit more scripted.”

Choosing which dick drawings to use also took some work. According to the creators, they focused on two things when choosing dicks for the series — key differences and timing. “We needed the dicks from the parking lot to resemble the dicks on the whiteboard enough that if you looked at them without paying too close attention, you’d think they’re the same dicks. But at the same time they also have to be different enough with the ball hairs and the head head shape that under close examination you’ll notice a few differences,” Perrault said.

However, it was also important that both the parking lot dicks and Dylan’s dicks would take roughly the same amount of time to draw. “I remember this very specifically because the final dicks you see on screen were not the original dicks,” he said.

That focus on authenticity also influenced how the show’s writing team created its characters. “ It was very important to us that they felt like people that we went to high school with. We didn’t want it to feel like everyone was dressed like GQ models or anything,” Yacenda said. “I think that one of the things that we said for a long time was that you look at The Breakfast Club or Mean Girls and I think that those were accurate depictions of high school at a time, but that wasn’t necessarily our experience where it was more of a melting pot.”

In order to make the series feel as realistic as possible, both Perrault and Yacenda interviewed students from different high schools in LA. “You pull little things that kind of, you never would have thought of,” Yacenda said. For example, the pair unsurprisingly found that Snapchat and Instagram were far more popular than Facebook. However, it was the way these interviewed teenagers used Instagram that surprised the creators and ultimately affected the series. “They have their public [Instagram] profile, and it has a theme, and it’s tastefully curated in their eyes. And then they have a private for just their close friends where they can post memes and gossip about other friends and stuff,” Yacenda said.

In order to make their characters feel as authentic as possible, Perrault and Yacenda were careful to only cast actors who could realistically depict these students and teachers. “I love our whole cast. I’m thrilled with our cast,” Perrault said.

Tyler Golden/Netflix

There’s also a surprising connection between American Vandal and another Netflix series — Marvel’s The Punisher. The Punisher’s Jon Bernthal is one of Perrault and Yacenda’s close friends and used to help the duo with their short films. “He would work with us for free,” he said. “One of his best friends is Sean Carrigan, who plays Coach Rafferty. And so for a while a few years back the four of us and some of Sean’s other friends would work on short films together.”

Perrault also addressed the huge question that’s been haunting this series from its first trailer — who drew the dicks? “Tony and I are a little surprised about how ambiguous people have considered it,” he said. American Vandal’s ending is left intentionally vague, speculating whether Dylan or Christa (G. Hannelius) committed the crime.

“We know who did it. Peter is pretty sure of who did it, but he feels that if he were to definitively claim it’s Christa without really conclusive proof, he’s no better than the school board,” he said. “But that being said, we knew that if we told a finale that was solely an episode about who drew the dicks, it would no longer feel like Dylan’s story. Ultimately this is a story about a kid who was unfairly labelled and still is at the very end, so much so that he kind of became the character people unfairly claimed he was.”

So far, the series hasn’t been renewed for a second season, but if it is, Perrault and Yacenda are ready with another fake crime saga. “We have a story with a new crime that we’d love to tell. It’s something that Tony and I spent a lot of time this summer working on,” Perrault said.

The co-creator wouldn’t reveal his plans for Season 2, but he did tease the fate of two of American Vandal’s main characters. “I’ll say this — Peter and Sam are back in the same way that Sarah Koenig returns to subsequent seasons of Serial. Those are our two main documentarians who are going to carry us through,” he said. “The ideas that [Perrault, Yacenda, and the writing team] currently have, I’m really excited about.”